• 6/30/08 2 PM - Bussing across the plain Nairobi to Arusha. Thorn trees, Masaii herders & the occasional ostrich and gazelle. In half an hour we’ll hit the border.
• 6/30/08 6 PM - Ran the gauntlet of hucksters @ the border and we’re in Tanz. Sun setting over the plain, Mt Kili on horizon, slowed for camel herder crossing the road.
• 6/30/08 9 PM - Polite notice to our esteemed customers or guests: Due to some reasons best known by the management … We offer laundry services in our hotel and therefore… washing inside the rooms is not allowed.
• 2. To all non-resident guests must have particulars to identify you properly & avoid any inconveniences which may happen

Rusted rump sign

Originally uploaded by furtwangl

(From Claire:) Today we just moved to another hotel in Mombasa. It’s very fancy and I like it. I really wish we could stay longer at A Rocha though. I loved it there and I want to go there again when I’m older. There’s a pretty beach just like Diani, but the waves were too rough to play in now, so we could just get our feet wet. I miss Seattle but I love it here!

The Golden RUMP!!! A-S forest.

Originally uploaded by furtwangl

(From Lyanda, who passed me scrawled notes to transcribe in this stuffy internet cafe while she headed for white wine by the pool-ed.)
Takaungu was very good to us, and we were reluctant to leave. While Tom was at his long Swahili lesson (should be “Kiswahili”-ed.), and Claire in school, I spent my last morning there walking the long, (illegible), red-soil path to the next village, Vuma. Second growth forests of palm, mango, and cashew-nut trees were dotted with traditional shambas (or family compounds - 3 or 4 small mud and thatch homes and shared gardens, goats, chickens - I am constantly amazed here by the tidiness of the shambas - the dirt floors are swept, the yards are raked, and it is all orderly).

Outside of Takaungu, where there are now a few pink-skinned volunteers all the time, “muzungu” foreigners like me are fairly rare, and so whole families would stand and stare , then would all smile and wave and say “habari” and invariably an adult would offer “karibu”-welcome.

The palm eventually gave way to maize fields and glistening views of the Indian ocean. I walked for hours, and can’t think of a better way to have ended our visit there.

If we needed cheering after the sadness of leaving Takaungu, the Golden-Rumped Elephant Shrew picked us right up. The Arabuko-Sokoke forest is pretty incredible and its most famous inhabitants the strangest, most wonderful little creature I have ever seen. It sure let us watch it, which is rare, and the more we watched it, the more weirder it was. Digging little holes in the leaf litter with its funny brown front legs, and sniffing around with its long “nose.” And its rump is SO golden!
The many endemics in the forest (shrew, birds, reptiles, and others) are depressingly endangered, depending entirely on this forest remnant. We feel fortunate for our hours of peaceful wandering there, in their presence. Many thanks to the lovely folks at A Rocha Kenya for their great conservation work, serene hospitality, and for the simple, perfect guest house at the edge of the forest and the ocean. XXOO - Ly

Hi from a shopping mall in the northern outskirts of Mombasa, as we end our sojourn in Kenya and prepare to head to Tanzania where camping safari and other adventures await. I’ve left the girls by the pool at a luxury beach hotel and braved the mad traffic jam to find internet, a few supplies, and foreign exchange.
We have had very limited internet the last 10 days, and it’s interesting to see how my phone posts are going - it seems to work so-so, but at least it works. I’ll edit them now, and try to keep posting by phone this week in Tanzania when we will have zero internet in our tents.
To catch up, we finished our week in Takaungu village, with me squeezing in as many Kiswahili classes as possible in Mr Aziz’s living room with the other (longer-term) volunteers, Lyanda wandering the village happily, and Claire in school. I did some photography and video for the project including attending a growth monitoring session 30 minutes walk outside the village, where the East African Center’s community health aides were weighing local kids ages 0-5, as they do monthly, recording their growth, and giving them vitamin E supplements. (See photos)
Most looked pretty healthy and well fed, except for the one kid in the throes of malaria, who was dispatched to the clinic. Interesting to see them weigh the kids by hanging them from a mango tree full of ripe mangoes!
Friday afternoon we said our goodbyes in Takaungu village and taxi’d up 45 minutes to Watamu. Watamu is an amazing natural place, at the mouth of Mida Creek there is a vast mangrove estuary, rich with tidal life and birds, and six kinds of mangrove trees. Then, inland a bit, is the Arabuko-Sokoke forest, a 425 Kilometer-square forest reserve that preserves three types of forest that once stretched along this whole coast. Heavily threatened by wood and animal poachers, the forest is rich in birds and animals, including several endemic species. The most amazing of which (at least for non-birders) is the Golden-Rumped Elephant Shrew.
We stayed at the beachfront guesthouse and research station of A Rocha Kenya, a Christian conservation organization (with sites worldwide) working to preserve the forest and estuary and running several innovative ecotourism schemes which fund school scholarships and other tangible evidence to the community that ecotourism is of benefit.
Saturday we took a guide into the forest and had the most AMAZING, long, close, intimate view of the Golden-Rumped Elephant Shrew, such a great sighting that even our sweet, understated guide was a little flabbergasted. That thing is COOL! And also saw great birds, many many kinds of lizards, ants, butterflies, and even a nice little snake (hi Tauna!). Then we visited the estuary, and the historic, forest-covered ruins of the ancient medieval Swahili trading city of Gede. All in all a great day.

• CEF: Fave animals we’ve seen: Elephants, bushbabies, colobus monkeys, the awesome baby python, aaand… THE GOLDEN RUMPED ELEPHANT SHREW … #
• LY: Agree w/Claire, top birds so far: Silvery-cheeked hornbill, purple banded sunbird, Fischer’s touracao, to name just a few. #
• Tom: Elephant shrew sighting was pretty amazing; I am also a big fan of the sacred ibis. Getting psyched for safari next week- hoping for big cats!! #

• Tom: Great week in village, we all agreed could’ve stayed a month. Next time. Claire’s a great trav’lr, and my Swahili is really coming along after 12 hrs of classes. Getting psyched 4 Tanz & camping safari next week.
• Tom: Made it to A Rocha Kenya, a christian conservation org. in Watamu. Very nice guesthouse on beach.
• Tom: Getting up @ 5 & taking bird guide into Arabuko-Sokoke forest to see local rarities.

• Tom: Someone asked our coordinates. House is: Lat 3 deg 41. 063 min south by 39 deg 51.409 min east. #
• Tom: Center + clinic: 3 deg 41.642 s by 39 deg 50.707 east. Google sat photo is October 2003. #

• From Claire: I am going 2 school here this week. The school here is very different. #
• CEF: The school has blackboards not whiteboards, no glass in the windows just screens, and no electricity. #
• CEF: I like Holy Rosary better, but it is fun to go to school in a different place. #
• Here in the village we are having more fun than ever before!!! I miss everyone!!! #

Morning school meeting.

Originally uploaded by furtwangl

Lyanda: Hello dear friends! Our walk to Kilifi this morning was truly beautiful–a couple/few ultra-peaceful miles through the plantations to the road, then a matatu into the town, which Tom says reminds him of the old west. We walked through the rickety stalls and shops, and changed traveler’s checks in a bank that truly did seem like it could be robbed at any moment by Butch Cassidy, in slightly modified attire. This morning I was packing Claire’s lunch for school, and she said, “white bread and peanute butter for breakfast AND lunch again? We told her, “Mommy and Daddy are walking five miles to get you corn flakes and mangos, so you just better be grateful!” We’re like Pa Ingalls. Claire is doing so awesome–the more off the beaten path we get, the more she seems to love it, and just settles right in. Traveling with Tom is also a treat–he is so at-home and savvy about the sometimes-opaque logistics of east-african travel. Part of it is experience, of course, but part of it is a gift–a matter of heart, which I appreciate. We’ll pick up a few groceries here, then head back the path we came to Takaungu–I’ll pick up CLaire at school, while Tom does his video work. We are all tremendously well and happy. xo, L

Greetings from the little town of Kilifi. We are staying in Takaungu village, but today after dropping Claire at school in the village, Lyanda and I took the little village boat across the inlet, walked two and a half miles across a beautiful (if depressing from an ecological perspective) sisal plantation, down a long baobab tree-shaded lane, then caught a minibus into town in search of some internet, some cash, and some peanut butter from the store.
Life in Takaungu village this week is great. We are guests of the East African Center, a community development project founded by a Seattle woman, and now the site of multiple vibrant programs, and multiple American volunteers. I visited Takaungu village in 2002 when the program was just getting started, to make their first fundraising video. It’s great to be back, in many ways it’s just as I left it (slow pace, laid back village, simple poverty of most of the homesteads) and in many ways there have been big changes – The East African Center now runs a primary school, a clinic, and many other programs.

Claire really wanted to go to the school, and so she’s there (in “Standard Four”) today for a second day, sitting in the little tin-roof classroom with the other kids, enjoying the strict pattern of rote memorization and formality that is the hallmark of even progressive private Kenyan education. (Ask, “how are you, children?” and all the children jump to their feet and yell in unison “We are very fine teacher!”) The school is about half Muslim and half Christian, and the school girls were a little shy on Monday. As fascinated by Claire as she was by them, they were still hesitant to actually talk to her or engage her yesterday. But Claire was excited to go back today (even though the 45 minutes of incomprehensible daily Swahili class is “really boring”), and hopefully the girls are all warming up and finding things to giggle about.

Meanwhile Lyanda and I have mostly just wandered the village, soaking in the sights, greeting the folks we wander past, and jumping under leafy mango trees when the occasional torrential cloudburst threatens to soak us to the core. Mangos are in season here, big juicy ripe mangos practically dripping from every tree, and the corn is knee high, and the women seem to spend about half the day toting enormous jugs of water back and forth to their homes, balanced on top of their heads.

Today (after the 2.5 mile walk back) I’ll start helping the center with a little video project, and try to squeeze in a couple of Kiswahili classes with Mr Aziz the retired teacher they have engaged for the volunteers, but mostly it’s just a slow-paced week of village life. We don’t have e-mail in the village so I’m just posting text messages from my phone from there, but you can trust that we are comfortable and happy, and we’ll get back to the blog and upload more village pictures from Watamu this weekend.